Thoughts on Cooking Up a Mexican Fiesta

[STEbbq]

I agree it really comes down to your comfort level in handling the balls in the air for delivering the level of quality food you want to do for your guests.

Unless you are delivering for a bunch of fellow Pitmasters, I think everyone is going to be pretty blown away by your tacos al pastor presentation and not really question the details of the rest of the meet beyond yummy. I frequently recall that many of the meals we consider utter failures are eagerly eaten by our guests.

If you think your audience will actually find it cool to watch you serve and plate three meats off the grill at once, I dunno, maybe reconsider.

Or you can just invite all of us next time and we can ooh and ahh over your deft performance.

[Dan Deter]

Yeah, if its a bunch of us Pitmasters we'll all be like "You left it on 2 seconds too long" and "Kenji recommends X" and "But Meathead recommends Y, shoulda done that"

[mnavarre]

Personally, I'd ditch the mini-trompo presentation for the al Pastor, as it's a PITA, doesn't work all that well, and actually kinda misses the point. The times I've tried it have resulted in some innovative new profanity, and crisping most of the meat up on the plancha anyway, so why bother? So now I just use Kenji's recipe/technique, which seems like a lot of effort, but really doesn't take much hands on time at all. Plus, you can make it ahead of time, so all you need to do is slice it up and crisp it on the plancha. Bonus drinking time.

The tinga reheats well, and is arguably better the next day anyway, so you're good there.

See, all you've got to do now is cook some steaks and heat up tortillas. More bonus drinking time.

[Mr. Bones]

Likeys th way ya drink, er, uh, think, Brother!